Coal seam gas debate

Lateline is joined by Ross Dunn from the Australian Petroleum Producers and Exploration Association and Drew Hutton from the Lock the Gate Alliance.

Transcript

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ALI MOORE, PRESENTER: To discuss coal seam gas mining I was joined by Ross Dunn from the Australian Petroleum Producers and Exploration Association, and veteran environmentalist Drew Hutton, now president of the Lock the Gate Alliance.

Ross Dunn and Drew Hutton, welcome to Lateline.

Ross Dunn, your industry has a real public image problem, hasn't it? Whether it's access to farmland or water supplies, there is real community concern about what you're doing?

ROSS DUNN, AUST. PETROLEUM PRODUCERS & EXPLORATION ASSOC.: This industry ... I guess it happens when you have big opportunities, you also have big challenges.

There is a big opportunity for New South Wales to develop this new gas resource - this new energy resource - but in doing that - in order to get the benefits of the cash flows, the money to the state, the money to regional areas, the jobs, the services - there is a requirement for this industry also to meet the high environmental standards expected of society. And that is the challenge for us.

There is also another challenge for New South Wales to recognise that development of this energy resource means that they can actually move away from a coal-dependent future, they can move to a transitional energy future where they can reduce greenhouse gases and be part of a low carbon future.

ALI MOORE: You talk about the environmental challenges there.

But do you acknowledge that, in many ways, this industry has run ahead of the science? Can you give any guarantees about the long-term impacts about what you're doing in terms of the influence and impacts on watered and underground water supplies?

Even - if you look at things like the National Water Commission - even that states that the cumulative effects of multiple projects are not well understood?

ROSS DUNN: Each of these projects ... in Queensland there are three projects that are taking coal seam gas through to liquefied natural gas for export. Each of those projects have been through a two to two-and-a-half year public environmental impact study.

Each of those projects has in turn been assessed at the state level, and again at the Federal level, and by their agencies - and in each case, they have received their environmental approvals with conditions which would further safeguard landholders, aquifers and the environment.

We're not suggesting that this industry is without impacts - as with any development, whether it's urban development or generating the power to meet that increased urbanisation - there are going to be impacts. It's a matter of being able to monitor those impacts and to manage them.

First of all, the transition to renewable energy that Ross is talking about - that gas is a transitional fuel - is just a load of bunkum. There's no transition being involved here. The only transition is from coal to gas.

There's no state or federal government in this country that actually has a plan to transition from coal through gas to renewables. The only role they've got for renewables is a boutique add-on so they can take a few gullible journalists around and say,"Look, we've got some renewable energy here." Really meaningful.

The same with the impacts on water. What we've got here is a precautionary principle being thrown out the window by governments. They've allowed these massive industries ... and these are huge, this is the biggest - if you take it all together, this is the biggest project in Australia's history. It's that big.

And the impacts are correspondingly big. And they have not obliged this industry to say that they can manage the impacts on underground water. They can't. Not at this stage anyway.

None of the major independent hydro-geological experts in this country are saying that they can. They're saying the impacts could destabilise the Great Artesian Basin for up to countries.

ROSS DUNN: Well, Drew, you can't have it both ways. You can't on one hand say, "This is going to take centuries to recover", and then on the other hand say, "It's going to have a very big impact on other aquifers".

If you're saying it's going to take centuries, well that means there's relatively ... relative geological isolation from the areas we're extracting water from, and the areas from where landholders are extracting water.

So, if you're saying it's going to take hundreds of years for whatever-it-is we do to the aquifers to repair, then you're saying there isn't extensive hydro-geological connection.

DREW HUTTON: It will be different in different parts of the continent. Some areas won't take very long to recover. They might take a few decades. Others will take a lot longer. It's just the nature of the whole system.

ALI MOORE: You're talking about recovery. Isn't the point that we actually don't have any firm knowledge about the impact to start with?

DREW HUTTON: No, this is outrageous. It really is outrageous that they have allowed a suck-it-and-see approach. What these companies are doing is they're extracting gas; they're extracting massive amounts of water at the same time.

That has the effect of destabilising our underground water systems, especially the Great Artesian Basin. And what they're doing is, as they go, they're trying to work out what the impacts are likely to be.

Here in Queensland, they've got a system of adaptive management. So if we really mess up, if we have a disaster, well we just simply change the regime. The industry has to make good. I don't know how you make good an aquifer that's just been destroyed, for centuries perhaps.

ALI MOORE: Ross Dunn, that goes back to the very first question. Is it a fair point that you don't know exactly what the impact is going to be over the next 10, 20, 30 years; this has not been done before?

ROSS DUNN: Nowhere else in the world have they taken coal seam gas to LNG for export, but there are examples around the world where coal seam gas is extracted and studies are done on the aquifers.

What needs to be remembered in this instance is that this is anything but a suck-it-and-see. If you have 2.5 years of EIS process thoroughly examined by state and federal levels and their agencies, and the cumulative impacts are considered, I don't consider that to be a suck-it-and-see approach - particularly when it's then known that across the basins, the impact of water extraction in one section is quite different from how it will impact in another.

Now, each of these areas are then going to be monitored by hundreds of bores, and that's the process by which the companies and the landholders can examine just what is happening to landholders' bores. And that's really what this is about: what is the impact on landholders?

DREW HUTTON: You just said ... you just confirmed what I've said. That they did not know ... even their EIS's that these companies did admitted that they did not know where the interconnectedness, for example, was between aquifers.

That's the key thing. Where's the interconnectedness? Where is it, what's the extent of it? They didn't know that at the start. They're going to find out as they go along.

ALI MOORE: Is that right, Ross Dunn? Is there any categorical statement, any categorical evidence that you do know about overlying aquifer, underlying aquifers and exactly what the impact going to be?

ROSS DUNN: There's a lot known about it; the Great Artesian Basin has been studied for many years. The various geological layers, the aquifers, the way the water moves within those aquifers and the amount of water there is, and how these layers lie on top of each other.

What will happen with the water from coal seam gas extraction? I guess if we look at where we've already done in Queensland now for 10 years, there is no impact outside of the area where we're actually taking the water from.

ALI MOORE: But we're now talking about a vast expansion of this industry. A lot is known but is enough known for you to be able to say now, categorically, that there won't be any major damaging impact?

ROSS DUNN: I don't believe there will be a major damaging impact. I don't agree with what Drew says. I'm not as pessimistic in my assessment. And bearing in mind I come to this job with a ... I guess a view where I'm probably more in the landholders' side than I am on the gas operators' side, because that's been my background.

So I look at this ... what does this mean from a landholder's perspective? What confidence do I have that this being done properly? And I guess another good measure of that is on the Condamine alluvium where the landholders there are arguably more affected by the impacts of water extraction than many other areas, because the coal seams there are closer to where they take the water from.

Those landholders in the main have recognised that there is legitimacy to both these industries - to agriculture and to coal seam gas extraction - and a lot of work, a lot of good work, good faith negotiations are taking place to see how these industries can best co-exist.

DREW HUTTON: And those negotiations are taking place because the landowners there locked the gate on the company and took them to court. That's what landowners have to do to get justice in this system. I've just come from ...

ROSS DUNN: Drew that is not correct. These negotiations have been occurring long before any legal action. Those legal actions do not involve all the landholders.

ALI MOORE: Drew Hutton, it involves ... there are some 13 families on the Darling Downs, but that's not all of them.

DREW HUTTON: Thirteen families in the Cecil Plains area. They've been negotiating with the company, and we've been dissatisfied with the negotiations and taken them to court. That's why Arrow Energy is negotiating in good faith now ...

ROSS DUNN: That is very unfair, Drew.

DREW HUTTON: ... because they were prepared to take a stand. Ross, I used to work with you guys in the Grain Growers Association, you and your boss Ian Macfarlane. And ironically, what we worked together with there was stopping mining companies coming onto good agricultural land.

Now you have joined the dark side and you're ...

ROSS DUNN: What we stopped there was a court system that was very unfair for landholders.

ALI MOORE: Ross Dunn, let me ask: what rights do landholders have?

ROSS DUNN: Landholders have a lot of rights.

ALI MOORE: But fundamentally, bottom line, can they stop you coming onto their property?

ROSS DUNN: You go back to what the process is. The government owns the resources. The government releases those resources to a company to develop on behalf of the people of the states.

Whether it's owned by the state or whether owned by the Federal Government, that process is in essence still going to be the same.

ALI MOORE: The answer then is no. Fundamentally, at the bottom line, there are no rights to stop you coming onto a property?

DREW HUTTON: Let me give you a ...

ALI MOORE: If I let Ross Dunn...

ROSS DUNN: If I'm allowed to finish that. If you were to take it to the end of the line, the companies can instigate proceedings where they could access the property. But do they do it? No, they don't.

Why don't they do it? Because they want good relationships with landholders, they're there for long term. There is no point at all for a company to have poor relationships with the landholders.

ALI MOORE: Drew Hutton, these companies are making multibillion dollar, multi-decade investments. Is there any impetus to not get on?

DREW HUTTON: Let me tell you the system, how it works.

In Queensland you've got 20 days to negotiate. Then the company can take you to compulsory mediation, after 20 days, for another 20 days. Then at the end of that 20 days, they can take you as a landowner to the Land Court. The minute it goes to the Land Court, they can legally enter your property.

Now, Ross is right when he says they haven't taken any landowner to the Land Court. That's not because they're wonderful chaps. It's because the minute they take a landowner, a farmer, to the Land Court, which then allows them to call the police in and bulldoze their way across that farmer's property to trash his land, then that's the time when the people of Australia will say, "That's intolerable".

Ross knows that. The companies know that. That's why they're not doing it. And that's why I invite them to do it, and take a landowner to the Land Court. We'll supply them with lawyers. We'll back them every inch of the way. And we'll fight you.

Because that's the only thing we've got, that governments have all lined up behind these companies. They don't care what the impacts are going to be, they care about the three-year electoral cycle.

ALI MOORE: Let me to get Ross Dunn to answer some of that, but let me couch it in these terms. If it was your family farm that you'd had in the family for generations - you'd invested for the future - and suddenly coal seam gas came along and said they don't want one well or two wells; in fact they want a multitude of wells on your property which is perfectly possible, would you consider that to be fair?

ROSS DUNN: I would expect, in that situation, that companies do what I believe they do now, where they approach it in such a way that there are no surprises for the landholder.

You talk early, you explain what the system is, you explain what they've got in mind. And you allow plenty of time so that the companies understand what your business is about. You get to understand what the companies are wanting to do.

ALI MOORE: But if you want to put a well here, does a landholder have the right to say, "Actually, no you can't put it there because that's my prime grazing land or that's where my chickens are or ..."

ROSS DUNN: Well, I think if you look at what's happening on the black soil plains of the Darling Downs, that is exactly what's happening.

There is an enormous amount of negotiation going on before any development is occurring, between the particular company there and the landholders, to say, well: "What the best way to develop this difficult development country - because it's black soil, it's laser-levelled irrigation country - what is best way that we can do this in such a way that the companies can still access the land - the service of the land in order to get to the resources underneath the ground - while the land holders can still do what they need to do?"

ALI MOORE: And, Drew Hutton, that is a fair point, isn't it. There have been successful outcomes and successful negotiations and there are some happy farmers?

DREW HUTTON: Some of them are happy. A lot have signed up because they didn't like the idea of having to fight it out with multinational mining giants in court. And so they figured they'd try and get the best deal they could.

That's my experience of why people sign up. An awful lot of people have fought them and have locked their gate.

ROSS DUNN: Well, I come back to the point: there is it no advantage to a company ...

DREW HUTTON: And they're still locking their gate. What Ross has just said sounds all nice, but you get up in a helicopter at Dalby, go west to Tara, then south to Chinchilla and have a look at the country underneath there.

ROSS DUNN: This comes back to the point that if you're going to develop an area you will have an impact. We never shied away from that. And in order, as with all of NSW...

DREW HUTTON: You have had a horrific impact.

ROSS DUNN: If you want to develop this resource for New South Wales, for the benefit of the people: to move New South Wales from the situation where they are 90 per cent reliant on coal for power generation and only four per cent reliant on gas; if they're serious about moving to a low emission economy, then this is their opportunity.

And not only is there the opportunity to do something positive for the climate, it's actually an opportunity to put money back into the state, back into regional communities.

DREW HUTTON: Where are the low emissions coming from? The Cornell University research ...

ROSS DUNN: Cornell University brings out a report ...

DREW HUTTON: Is both showing that fugitive emissions from coal seam gas are likely to make the coal seam gas every bit as carbon intensive ...

ROSS DUNN: The Cornell University - their work does not that show that at all.

ALI MOORE: I know that you both fundamentally agree on the emission situation and this entire question. There are so many other issues around this, but we are out of time. Thank you very much for joining us. No doubt it's a subject we'll revisit again.